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Does anyone else kind of wish that the whole "aliens aren't just rampaging barbarians and will only attack you when provoked" thing actually worked right? Instead of this mess of them attacking you whenever they feel like it?

Does anyone else kind of wish that the whole "aliens aren't just rampaging barbarians and will only attack you when provoked" thing actually worked right? Instead of this mess of them attacking you whenever they feel like it?

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There's a system to their madness. Weak or ranged units are easy meat for them, and will be taken out if the player attacked aliens too much. Sometimes the aliens delay for a turn to surround the offending unit, and then attack it. And everything within 2 hexes of a nest is pretty much attacked at least the second turn after it came in view.

In my experience, sea creatures are markedly more agressive than land creatures. Explorers on land during my games have mostly been left alone by aliens except when two hexes or so from an alien nest. Even the dreaded, earth drinking siege worm does not automatically attack (but I do not put anything adjacent to one if I can possibly avoid it!). This actually makes sense, as IRL sea predators are much more agressive than land dwellers. They have to be, as you can escape a lot faster in an ocean environment (three dimensions, and no obstacles except at the bottom or top of the sea).

Now carriers... I never thought of using trhem for scouting as they seemed too high value. See, my experience is that early game, gunboats on auto explore WILL be eaten, and until the observatory quest and unles you build the Panopticon, manually exploring is too time consuming and ultimately risky. Does having an embarked tacjet increase the visual range of a carrier? I know they did in Civ V, but I've only used carriers late game, and with heavy escort... That would be interesting! My only alternative so far has been to get the aliens friendly, by buying a tile on top of an alien nest. When blue, even the kraken is peaceful. Just bobbing around like a big adorable murder death kille mountain at sea...

I have not had much issue with aliens in my games since RT. I have been making lots of explorers early and rushing expedition sites.

I go out of my way not to attack them at all till I get low on expeditions to dig up then I have been moving my now useless explorers onto alien nests along with any other military units I have available. Once I have a ton of nests occupied I spend a turn pillaging all the nests and then they are PO but who cares I got a huge library of artifacts out of it.

I can let them cool off for a few turns or start farming aliens as I have begun to prepare for this by picking up bonuses for killing them prior to the nest popping turn. Science from aliens virtue maybe a personality trait for more of something and or a trade agreement for more of something for killing units.

So I dunno. Seems to me if you leave them alone they don't bother you (I mean never attack them not even a oops I didn't see you there attack). So long as you walk on eggshells around them they won't bother you even if you have several units on a nest for many turns.

Seems like an oversight with the alien AI to me, but I have been running with it to check out artifact combinations.

Side note: AI players don't seem to respond to nabbing pods and expeditions near them either. Could be negative and it is just not giving a notification but I don't think so.

1) My explorer was near their nest (2 hexes maybe). Note: they will attack even if you don't see nest itself (like vision blocked by a hill).
2) I destroyed their nest recently, making all aliens angry at me for a couple of turns.